1918- Thomas Edison sold his studio and gets out of the
movie business. He had earlier fired W.K.L. Dickson inventor of the movie
studio set, Edwin Porter the inventor of the narrative film, and J. Stuart
Blackton the inventor of cartoon animation for annoying him too much about
filmmaking. Edison was more interested in finding a way to extract iron ore
from rocks using magnets.

1968- In New York’s Bowery district two children find the
body of a homeless drug addict. The John Doe is later identified as Bobby
Driscoll, 31, Walt Disney child star and the voice of Peter Pan.

1939- Moviestars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard marry. They
had a happy marriage until Lombard was killed in a plane crash in 1942.

1951- 'The King and I' debuts on Broadway with Gertrude
Lawrence and Yul Brynner, who shaved his head for the first time for the role.

1971- First day of shooting on the film the Godfather.
Francis Coppola wanted young actor Al Pacino for the Michael Corleone role, but
Pacino had signed with Fox to do a different film- The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot
Straight. Producer Robert Evans begged and pleaded with Fox exec James Aubrey
"The Smiling Barracuda" to get Pacino released from his contract.
Finally Aubrey replaced him with Jerry Ohrbach. He called Evans and said:"
All right, you can have the midget."

1989- At that same Oscar ceremony Pixar’s short Tin Toy became
the first CG animation to ever win and Oscar.

1973- In one of the more celebrated stunts in Hollywood
history, when Marlon Brando won an Oscar for his role in The Godfather, he sent
a buckskin clad model named Sashin Littlefeather to refuse the award, and
deliver a protest about treatment of Native Americans.

1978- The first draft script of the film Norma Rae
completed. The film dramatized the life of Christa Lee Jordan, a mill worker
who was blackballed by the J.P. Stevens millworks for wanting a union.

25th anniversary, March 25, 1989, Who Framed Roger Rabbit earned
four Oscars at the Academy Awards. Sound Effects, Visual Effects, Film Editing
and a special one for Richard Williams for the animation.

1932- First Motion Picture Academy
President William DeMille, the brother of Cecil B., started a 'Squawk
Forum", inviting film industry workers to air their grievances with their
studio heads. (and this way they won't ask to unionize ). The first boss on the
hot seat was MGM's Louis B. Mayer. He was greeted with boos, insults and
catcalls, mostly from his writers. The forum quickly devolved into a shouting,
screaming free for all. Mayer furiously stormed out and preceded to fire all
those Metro employees he could remember were there. The Squawk Forum idea was
abandoned.

1954- RCA began mass production and
marketing of color television sets. At the time the set cost as much as an
automobile-$1,000, 12 inch screen and
there was very little programming in color.

1955- US Customs seize a shipment of 258
copies Alan Ginsburg’s poem Howl printed in the UK on the grounds it was
obscene." I saw some of the finest minds of my generation destroyed by
madness." Next year when Lawrence Ferlinghetti of San Francisco’s City
Lights Bookstore printed the poem he was arrested.

1966 - Beatles pose with mutilated dolls
& butchered meat for the cover of the "Yesterday & Today"
album, It was later pulled.

1967 -The Who & Cream make their US
debut at Murray the K's Easter Show.

1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their
week-long "love-in" for peace in the bed of Room 902 of the Hilton
Hotel, Amsterdam.

1912- Sir Arthur Conan-Doyles adventure novel The Lost
World, first published in magazine installments. It was the first of the Land-of-the-Dinosaurs
type stories.

1939- The film the Hound of the Baskervilles premiered with
actors Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson . They
became the most famous interpreters of the characters and went on to make a
dozen more films.

1913- Jack London (White Fang, The Call of the Wild ) wrote
fellow writers HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill and asked
them how much they get paid. He was unsure what to charge.

1958- Hollywood producer Mike Todd was killed in a small
plane crash. He produced hit movies like Around the World in 80 Days and
romanced starlets like Gypsy Rose Lee and Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor and Todd had
been married for one year and she was devastated by the accident. Years and
many marriages later Taylor said Mike Todd was the only man she actually loved.

1970- The Beatles break up. Paul McCartney filed papers in a
London court for a formal dissolving of the Fab Fours partnership.

1995- First day of shooting on that utterly classic film-
Dinosaur Valley Girls!

1951- HOLLYWOOD COMMIES- House UnAmerican Acitivities
Commitee (HUAC) under Judge J. Parnell Thomas moves from Washington and sets up
in Hollywood to continue rooting out Communist subversion in the movies. They
began in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, and later move to the federal building
downtown.

Their concerns weren’t total fantasy, actor Sterling Hayden
confessed he was ordered by his communist operatives to try and influence the
Screen Actor’s Guild. Still the point remains whether the authorities
overreaction was justified and whether Congress could get more publicity
looking for spies in Tinseltown than the Department of Games and Fisheries.

Out of 15,000 people who made a living in the movies and
television, only 295 were ever proven or confessed communists. It was an open
secret that for $5,000 delivered to the right committee member your dossier
would be moved to the bottom of the pile. The hearings stopped in 1956, the
blacklist was broken in 1960 and Judge J. Parnell Thomas went to jail himself
for embezzlement.

1952- DJ Alan Freed put on an event of new pop music in
Cleveland Ohio. Called the MoonDog Coronation Ball, it was the very first Rock
Concert.

1961- The Beatles first perform at the Cavern Club in
Hamburg Germany.

1988- the Screen Actor's Guild hits the bricks for the
fourth time in twenty years, this time striking Hollywood for residuals for
cable and videocassette income.

2006- The first Tweet sent on the new format Twitter. Scientist
Jack Dorsey tweeted his friends “ Setting up my twttr…” Twitter went public
that July.

1841- Edgar Allen Poe's The Murder's in the Rue Morgue first
published in Graham’s Magazine. Called the first true detective novel, Poe's
detective C. Auguste Dupin was inspired by a real French sleuth named Jules
Vinquoc who used disguises and scientific technique to solve crimes the Paris
police could not handle. Dupin was the inspiration for Conan Doyle's Sherlock
Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.

1852-Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
first published. ”

1903- Henri Matisse exhibits at the Salon des Independents
in Paris.

1931- Cantors Kosher deli opened in the Fairfax neighborhood
of Los Angeles.

1943-MGM's "Dumb Hounded" the first Droopy
Cartoon.

1969-John Lennon married Yoko Ono on the Rock of Gibraltar.

1991- A judge ordered the Walt Disney Company to pay Peggy
Lee $3.8 million for the songs she wrote and performed in the film Lady and the Tramp. This additional
income was from videocassette sales for a re-issue. In 1955 she was paid $3,500.

1875- Mark Twain admits in a
letter to a friend that he now likes to use a typewriter, a new technology
accused of ruining the art of writing.

1895- The Lumiere Brothers shot
their first movie, employees leaving their dad’s factory.

1914- A fire in the negative
vaults of the Eclair Studios in New Jersey destroyed forever all the American
work of pioneer French animator Emile Cohl. He had come to the U.S. to animate
the first cartoon series, George McManus’ "The Newlyweds" later to be
renamed in comic strip form "Life With Father".

1953- First T.V. broadcast of the
Oscar ceremony. That utterly memorable circus film

"The Greatest Show on
Earth"won top honors. Ironically
it was Cecil B. DeMille’s only Oscar of his career. Before TV, the Oscars
ceremony included a dinner and an hour of dancing before the awards were
presented.

1924-The film “Thief of Baghdad” starring Douglas Fairbanks
and designs by William Cameron Menzies premiered. It is considered the first
great special effects blockbuster.

1942- Paramounts “The Lost Dream” the first Little Audrey
cartoon.

1965-The Rolling Stones are fined 5 English pence for
urinating on a wall in Stratford at ABC recording studio Romford.

1967- The Pirates of the Caribbean ride opened at
Disneyland, designed by master animator Marc Davis. In recent years rampant
political correctness has disturbed the pirates fun. One diorama that portrayed
a lusty buccaneer chasing a wench around a table while she giggles. It was
changed to show he was only interested in her sandwich tray.

1968- Mel Brooks first film “The Producers” premiered with
Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Dick Shawn. His screenplay beat out Kubricks 2001
for a Best Screenplay Oscar. In the late 1990s Brooks reworked the screenplay
into a hit Broadway musical.

1762- in New York City, Irish militiamen against orders
marched down Broadway to Hull's Tavern to a St. Patrick's Day breakfast. The
first recorded St. Patty's Day parade. In 1848 several Irish-American
organizations marched together and the parade became large enough to bring out
the Mayor to preside.

1845- Rubber Bands invented.

1898- First test of a practical submarine. Americans had
experimented with underwater travel since 1776 with Bushnells
"Turtle" then the Civil War CSS Hunley. In the ocean off Staten
Island a diesel-electric battery powered sub built by the John A. Holland
Electric Boat Company of Georgia ran underwater for an hour and forty minutes
then resurfaced. As a child Holland was inspired by Jules Verne's novel Twenty
Thousand Leagues under the Sea".

1901- At a grand exhibition of his paintings at
Bernheim-Jeune Palace in Paris, the world discovered the brilliance of a poor
Dutch lunatic who had shot himself a few years back- Vincent Van Gogh.

1965- Chicago began the Saint Patrick’s Day tradition of
dyeing the Chicago River green.

1982- Politically conservative Hollywood actors led by
Charlton Heston broke with the Screen Actor’s Guild and form a rival group
called AWAG ( American Working Actor’s Guild). They were angered by SAG
president Ed Asner’s taking their union into national politics by condemning
Pres. Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America, capped by the SAG board
refusing Reagan (their former president) the Guild lifetime achievement award.

As a result Ed Asner’s hit t.v. show “Lou Grant” lost
sponsors and was cancelled and Heston’s career cooled as well, beyond heading
the NRA and writing cranky letters to the L.A. Times calendar section that Ben
Hur wasn’t gay.